


it's you i'm looking for

by meretricula



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-20
Updated: 2011-01-20
Packaged: 2017-10-14 22:14:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/154042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meretricula/pseuds/meretricula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A retirement party, a drunken proposal, a misunderstanding or two, and then they got married and lived happily ever after. What could go wrong?</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's you i'm looking for

**Author's Note:**

> originally written for the inaugural edition of [netcord](http://chair-umpire.livejournal.com/1703.html) on livejournal.

It was Marat's idea in the beginning, which was strange in and of itself. He'd never been a dick about things, even when he had the excuse of actually being a jackass teenager instead of just acting like one most of the time, but it wasn't hard to tell that it made him uncomfortable, so they usually tried to be discreet around him. But when the party had died down to just the three of them sitting around the kitchen table finishing off a bottle of vodka while David and Juan Carlos gave Marat precisely the right amount of grief over the matrimonial glint in the eye of his latest nearly pre-pubescent girlfriend, Marat was the one who retorted, "So why don't you two go first if you're so interested in it?"

"What?" Juan Carlos looked honestly bewildered.

"Well, it's legal in Spain, isn't it?" Marat shrugged and downed another shot. "Your parents know, his coach knows. Ferru will probably worry less about you straying for younger, prettier faces while he's off on tour if you put a ring on his finger," he added, waggling his eyebrows. David glared at him. He'd told Marat about that in confidence, or more specifically an ill-judged confidence that Marat would keep his word and not repeat it to Juan Carlos. "Plus, Javi might give you conjugal visits." Marat grinned as he poured them all another round.

"Don't be ridiculous," Juan Carlos said dismissively. "David knows he has nothing to worry about." David looked away, and a moment later he heard Juan Carlos sigh. "Oh, for the love of Christ, David, for the millionth time, _you have nothing to worry about_."

David stared fixedly at the last two centimeters left in the vodka bottle. "You could have anybody you wanted," he muttered.

"I don't _want_ anybody. I want _you_ ," Juan Carlos said. David felt alcohol-clumsy fingers under his chin, and let Juan Carlos pull his head back up. "And if I have to sign a legally binding contract to make you believe it, you know what, fine. There's probably a courthouse open tomorrow that we can go to."

"I'm not going to marry you," David snapped.

"Why not?"

"Because… because!" he sputtered, confounded more by Juan Carlos' patient look than the vodka tying his tongue. "Because we can't, okay, stop making fun of me."

"I'm not making fun of you," Juan Carlos said. "I love you, and I want you to stay with me, and I don't want you to worry that I don't. Marat's right, it's legal here. There's no reason why we can't - unless you don't _want_ to marry me."

"I don't want to marry you because we're drunk and Marat suggested it and it seemed like a good idea at the time," David said angrily. His syntax might have been confused, but his sentiments weren't.

"So if I asked and we weren't drunk - "

"You can ask me in the morning, if you can remember anything past your hangover." He slammed back the shot Marat had poured him, grabbed the vodka bottle away from Marat's encroaching fingers, poured it out and drank that too. "Also, fuck you very much. I'm going to bed."

"Touchy, touchy!" Marat shouted after him. David ruined his own exit by calling Marat a dog-fucking son of a whore and stormed upstairs.

*

David woke up two hours later when Juan Carlos stumbled into bed and made a drunken attempt to cuddle, and he was still staring up at the ceiling long after Juan Carlos' breathing had settled into its usual almost hypnotic wheeze. The only thing Juan Carlos said to him in the morning was, "Oh god, where's the aspirin, I think I'm dying," though, and David figured that was that - another one of Marat's brilliant ideas, best forgotten in the light of day. Except one day at practice Javi kept snickering during footwork drills and the only explanation David could get out of him was, "You sure have that boy whipped," and then the next time he was home his mother tried to sit him down for a "conversation" about his relationship with Juan Carlos that left him wanting to run out of the room with his hands over his ears shrieking, "La la la I can't hear you!" in a way he hadn't since he was twelve and his father tried to tell him about the mechanics of sexual intercourse, and finally Dinara - _Dinara_ , for god's sake, he was never going to be able to look another Russian in the eye without blushing for the rest of his life - asked him how long he planned to make Juanqui suffer, at which point David thought that something strange was probably going on.

He could have tried to get an explanation out of Marat, but more than enough of the problems in David's life had originated from listening to Marat in the first place, so he swallowed his pride and called Juan Carlos. If he was going to be honest with himself, he wanted to anyway - it was ridiculous, missing Juan Carlos like he did, when they'd been apart for months at a time before, when Juan Carlos was injured or playing different tournaments but still officially on the tour, but it somehow felt different knowing that this was it, and Juan Carlos wasn't ever coming back. He missed the stupidest, tiniest details about Juan Carlos, the way he couldn't help being an over-competitive ass over practice sets and bitched at length to anyone who would listen about having to leave his dogs at home; he even missed the snoring and the way he always, always stole the blankets in the middle of the night.

Missing Juan Carlos made him sound even more irritable when he called, but he knew not to get bothered by David's moods. "It's a surprise," he said, with that annoyingly oracular tranquility he got sometimes, because he was older and of course that meant he knew best.

"If _Dinara_ knows already, it's not much of one," David said crossly. "And I hate surprises anyway."

Juan Carlos was quiet for a moment, and when he finally spoke he sounded less certain. "I thought you'd like this one." David almost felt guilty, but then he remembered that Juan Carlos was a smug asshole who'd been going behind his back to everyone they knew about whatever this was, and any sense of remorse immediately evaporated.

"Why don't you tell me, and I can be the judge of that."

"I thought - I wanted - oh, for god's sake, Ferru, I was trying to ask you to marry me," Juan Carlos said, exasperation crackling in his voice over the phone. "Properly, you know. I was going to do it when you came home for the tournament in Valencia. I thought - I don't know, it seemed like a nice gesture or something. To ask in front of everyone. Maybe after our first doubles match, if we play. I hadn't planned that far yet."

"Oh," David said blankly. "What would have done if I didn't say yes?"

"Been very embarrassed, probably. Why? You'd say no?"

"You know I don't like big - fusses," David said, only half-focused on what Juan Carlos had said. "Did you say something to Javi? And my mother?"

"I asked if he'd be all right with me coming with you to some of your tournaments, after - I mean, if you said yes. And I asked your parents for their permission to marry you. And I asked Dinara to help me pick a ring," he added, pre-empting David's next question. "David, I didn't - I'm _sorry_ ," he said. He sounded genuinely upset, and David frowned, puzzled. "I thought you wanted - I thought. I guess I just… I thought you'd say yes."

"What? Don't be stupid, of course I will. Just please don't ask me during a tennis match. Also, I can't believe you asked my mother before you asked me," David added. That conversation he'd had with her was, in retrospect, _even more embarrassing_. "But if you really want me to marry you I will."

"I - oh." David heard something crash on Juan Carlos' side of the line, maybe a dish falling or a chair being knocked over. "I thought - you said no, last time. Because it wasn't - "

"I said no because you were too drunk to walk in a straight line and I thought you didn't mean it. For fuck's sake, Juanca. I told you to ask in the morning, and you didn't."

"I thought you wanted - " Juan Carlos suddenly laughed. "I don't know what I was thinking. I thought you wanted a bigger gesture."

"Have I ever in my entire life wanted a bigger gesture?" David snorted. "No, I mean - well, I don't know what I would have said if you'd asked in the morning."

"My charming self wouldn't have won you over?"

"Your charming self smelled like sweat and vodka and was throwing up until two in the afternoon," David retorted. He hesitated, then added, "I did think about it, you know. I've _been_ thinking about it. It's not just - I mean, I really miss you."

"I miss you too," Juan Carlos said quietly.

David looked at the clock by his bed - he still had at least an hour before Javi came to drag him down to dinner. It was probably some disgusting time of day or night in Spain, with the time difference from South America, but Juan Carlos was a man of leisure now anyway. He stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes, his phone clutched close to his ear. "So what does my ring look like?"

"I'll bring it when I come to see you," Juan Carlos said. "You can see for yourself."

David scowled. "Barcelona's not for two more months."

"So maybe I'll come sooner." David hummed a little, settling in, and Juan Carlos started telling him about everything that had happened in Valencia since he'd left - little stories, for the most part, just what the students at the academy had gotten up to, and things like that; one of the dogs had had puppies, and Juan Carlos had had dinner with David's parents while David was in Australia. David was mostly just listening to the tone of his voice, not the words.

"No big gestures," he interrupted suddenly, in the middle of Juan Carlos' account of some conversation he'd had with David's brother earlier that week. "I mean it."

"I will ask you to marry me in the most discreet possible way," Juan Carlos promised, and went back to telling David what Javier had said without losing a beat.

*

"Why did I ever agree to this?" David moaned, staring out the window at the crowd milling around the practice courts. They had taken down the nets and the fences for the occasion, but he still felt obscurely offended by all the people tramping around and smudging the lines. "Oh god, I think I'm going to be sick. Why didn't we elope?"

"Because your mother would have killed me," Juan Carlos said patiently. "It's just a party. Calm down. The worst that can happen is that Dinara will make you pose for a photo with the cake."

"I don't even remember saying yes," David went on, completely ignoring him. "When did I do that? I want to go back in time and _hit_ myself. I need a cigarette." He left the window and started to pace. Juan Carlos grabbed his hands as he moved past him, and David realized he was twisting his ring around his finger.

"Technically you didn't," Juan Carlos said.

"What?"

"Technically you didn't say yes. I just gave you the ring, I never asked. So, hopefully this is a small enough gesture, but…" To David's horror, Juan Carlos started to get down on his knees.

"Stop it, stop it!" he yelped. "That's really okay!" Juan Carlos straightened up, and he let out a sigh of relief. "For god's sake, Juanca."

"No, this is important," Juan Carlos said firmly. "I'll stay on my feet if it makes you that uncomfortable, but I'm going to say this anyway, so shut it for a minute and let me talk, Ferrer.

"I love you so much. You have no idea, I know you don't, you just never understand how amazing you are, but I think you're the most perfect human being in the entire world and sometimes I can't even believe you're mine. _Years_ and I still can't believe it.

"I fucked this up the first time I asked you. I didn't think about it, I just asked, because… because I thought marrying you sounded great. I mean, I still think marrying you sounds great, but I didn't say why, and I should have. I want to make you happy. I want to make you happy today, and tomorrow, and twenty years from now I want to still be here with you making you happy, because you make me happy, just by being here with me. I want to get up in the middle of the night and think about killing you because you're kicking me in your sleep again, I want to wake up to your horrible breath in the morning, and I want to be the first thing you smile at when you get out of bed. I love you. Will you marry me?"

David waited until the silence got uncomfortable. "Oh, am I allowed to talk now?" Juan Carlos glared. "I think, given that I've been wearing your ring for half a year now and we have an entire academy full of guests for our wedding, the answer is probably _yes_ , you fuckwit."

Juan Carlos looked like he couldn't decide whether he wanted to kiss David or strangle him, so David stood on tiptoe, pulled Juan Carlos down to meet him and made up his mind for him. "Thank you," he added when he settled back on the floor. "For not saying that in front of everyone."

"I thought that would probably qualify as a gesture," Juan Carlos said. His smile was so wide it was nearly blinding, and David had to kiss him again. And then again, and they could have kept at that for a while, except that Marat almost immediately barged into the room with all the grace of an elephant.

"All right, break it up, they're waiting for you two downstairs," he said impatiently. "Come on, that kid Monaco keeps talking to Dinara and if I don't get back down soon he might actually make a move."

"Can't have that," Juan Carlos said. "Ready?" he asked, and held out his hand to David.

"Yes," David said. "Yes."

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Marat Safin spent his teenage years training in Valencia with David and Juan Carlos. He is fluent in Spanish, as is his younger sister Dinara. All four players train or have trained at Juan Carlos' tennis academy in Valencia.  
> 2\. Javi is Javier Piles, David's coach. Javier is Javier Ferrer, his older brother and a childhood friend of Juan Carlos.  
> 3\. David Ferrer has an [inferiority complex the size of a boulder](http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/tennis/french08/columns/story?columnist=garber_greg&id=3420172).  
> 4\. Pico Monaco's been [flirting with Dinara on Twitter](http://twitter.com/#!/Dinarik27/status/25508023707377665). Watch out, dude. Big bro will cut you.  
> 5\. This was originally supposed to be the fifth part of a "Five Things That Never Happened To David Ferrer" prompt. Sorry 'bout that. I'll write the rest of it someday.  
> 6\. Title taken from [All My Days](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R5IQoIYvTM&feature=related) by Alexi Murdoch.  
> 7\. General ranting about the pure and true love of Juan Carlos Ferrero and David Ferrer can be found [here](http://meretricula.livejournal.com/152137.html). There are pictures.


End file.
